The shortest answer to the question of how U.S. figure skater Nathan Chen landed his historic six quadruple jumps at the Winter Olympics last week is: He jumped, succeeded and then just kept jumping.

But there’s a longer answer, too.

“I start every day just trying to narrow down little tasks so I don’t get so overwhelmed by the whole picture, and that’s the way that I approached my long program here,” Chen, 18, tells PEOPLE just a few days after his startling comeback in the...